When an installation must define a large number of TPs, it might be advantageous to define them early, before the installation has completely migrated to a new release of MVS. When the TP profiles and side information are defined early, the TPs are ready to run soon after the new release is installed.

Although the APPC/MVS administration utility (ATBSDFMU) is available with MVS/ESA SP 4.2, it is possible to install it on a lower level system. The utility can run on MVS/ESA SP 3.1 or later. The parts that comprise the utility can be moved to the lower level system from a test system running MVS/ESA SP 4.2 or later.

When installed early, the utility can scan for errors and perform the services for all side information entries and for TP profile entries of TPs not scheduled by the APPC/MVS transaction scheduler. However, for TPs scheduled by the APPC/MVS transaction scheduler, the JCL portion of the TP profile cannot be checked for correct syntax. If the JCL contains an error, the TP will fail when invoked, and messages might not define the JCL error.

If you want to ensure that the JCL of a TP profile defined early has correct syntax before the TP is invoked, you can deactivate the TP profile when defining it, and activate it with a TPMODIFY. The JCL will then be checked for syntax errors. Activation of profiles is controlled by the ACTIVE keyword in the attributes section of the TP profile.